Gib tied the boat to one of the roots, heaved his bundles and the old ax ashore, then scrambled up the bank. He shouldered the bundles and picked his way along a faint path that ran up a hollow between two of the towering hills. He reached and crossed a better-defined path, a trail used by the infrequent pack trains that were either passing through or coming to trade with the gnomes.

The marsh had been noisy with blackbirds, but as Gib walked deeper into the wooded hills a hushed silence closed in about him. Leaves rustled in the wind, and occasionally he could hear the tiny thud of a falling acorn as it hit the ground. Earlier in the morning squirrels would have done some chattering to greet the morning sun, but now they were going quietly about their business of foraging for food, slipping like darting shadows through the woods.

The climb was steep, and Gib stopped for a moment to lean against a lichen-grown boulder. He didn't like the woods, he told himself. Gone from it for only a short time, he already missed the marsh. The woods had a secretive grimness and the marsh was open. In the marsh one knew where he was, but here one could easily become confused and lost.

5

Sniveley, the gnome, said, "So you have come for your ax."

"If it is ready," Gib said.

"Oh, it is ready well enough," Sniveley grumbled. "It was ready yesterday, but come on in and sit. It is a tiring climb up here, even for a young one."

The cave opened out from the hillside, and beyond its mouth, half filling the deep ravine that ran below it, was a heap of earth and slag, a huge hog's back, along which ran a wheelbarrow track to reach the dump of mine tailings at its end. So ancient was the earth and slag heap that along its sloping sides trees had sprung up and reached a respectable size, some of them canted out of line so that they hung above the ravine at eccentric angles. Back from the mouth of the cave, extending deep into the hill, forge-flames flared, and there was the sound of heavy hammering.